Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Theo lived most of his life in a box. Everything he did, everywhere he went, who he spoke to, sometimes even what he ate, was defined by fear.
He didn't know if he could be the man needed to execute this plan.
All it took was one more look into Lyra's blue eyes, as deep as the sea that surrounded them, and the courage Theo had been looking for his entire life surged through his veins with a vengeance.
“Now!” Theo shouted, tossing the oar with one hand over the side. It signaled Wyn and Niamh as Theo released Lyra's hands, only to grab her forearms. With an ease and a strength only possessed by fae, Wyn hauled her out of the water and into the boat.
“Theo!” Lyra screeched, shocked, immediately looking for Cliodhna's reaction.
Several feet away, Wyn was helping Lyra’s sister up onto his deck as she struggled to get used to her own feet after going so long without trading forms.
Cliodhna screeched, the cry more frustrated than angry, and slammed her hands down against the surface of the water.
“Do you have a death wish?” she cackled, her size growing again, soon towering over the Barufakr and the dingy.
Where her hands met the water, ripples began to radiate from her fingertips. Instead of sea foam, the waves were crowned with shards of bone as a hundred sodden ghouls surged up from the depths. They circled the boats like krill and schools of fish, waiting for someone to fall into the sea.
“What are you thinking?” Lyra shouted, foregoing her fins to stand up on two shaky legs, wrapping her hand around Theo's arm.
He stood on the dinghy's small bench, shoving Lyra behind him, his other arm outstretched towards the sky.
He wasn't even looking at Cliodhna, who was eyeing him down like a predator.
Theo shouted over the din, the wind starting to whip furiously around their bodies.
“Don't worry. I have a plan!”
“I am most definitely worried!” Lyra shouted back, although another sharp cry drowned out her fears. Lyra turned to Cliodhna, preparing for any number of wicked sights the goddess had prepared, but instead, Cliodhna was staring up at the clouds. She was just as confused as Lyra was.
The noise broke through the din again, a piercing noise that sounded almost like a hawk, but… bigger.
Much, much bigger.
Somewhere in the chaos, the rain and wind had picked up with a vengeance, pelting Theo and Lyra and drenching them to the bone.
Lyra pushed some of her wet hair out of her face, gripping onto Theo's soaking shirt as she turned back towards the Barufakr.
Her fear compounded as she caught a glimpse of Wyn climbing up to the crow's nest, her sister clutching onto his back for dear life.
“Theo, what the—fuck!” Lyra turned around to yell at Theo for his absolute lack of a plan, but when she did, the skies split open. A colossal dragon emerged from the thunderclouds, weaving in and out of lightning and aiming straight for them.
“Theo!” Lyra shrieked, throwing her arms around his waist. “This better be part of your fucking plan!”
Theo only laughed in response, which Lyra assumed was an affirmative.
She had never seen a creature as fearsome as the serpentine monster that was bearing down towards them, fire burning in its belly as smoke whipped around its wings.
They weren't the only ones to see it. Cliodhna's mouth dropped open, unnaturally wide, until her rotten jaw nearly hung from her skull.
For the first time, Lyra and Theo saw something in the goddess's eyes that gave them hope—fear. Wyn was right. There were very few things a goddess feared, and a dragon was one of them.
The dragon swooped down in between the dinghy and Cliodhna, unleashing a barrage of fire from its gaping maw.
Lyra could barely fathom the size of the creature, its talons like swords and scales the size of dinner plates.
Wherever it swooped too close to the water, the ocean started to simmer and boil on the surface, the waves dissipating.
Cliodhna screamed, a ghastly sound, echoed all at once by a hundred ghouls in the water. Lyra and Theo cringed, Lyra hiding her head between Theo’s shoulders, desperate to block out the horrible sound. Cliodhna's head was engulfed in flame, singeing her hair and steaming where fire met water.
The fire burned so hot that it could melt steel, evaporating most of the water dripping off Cliodhna on contact. She dropped underneath the surface of the water, disappearing beneath the boiling waves and dislodging the sea foam of bones, desperate to relieve herself of the fiery pain.
“Now! Niamh!” Theo shouted, waving his hands back and forth above his head. They had only seconds to get this right.
Lyra tried to stay calm as the dragon turned on a dime, showcasing incredible agility for a beast that size, and started flying straight towards them.
“Hold onto me, tightly!” Theo instructed, wrapping his arms around Lyra and demanding she do the same.
Lyra cocooned herself in Theo's embrace, finding a semblance of peace tucked against his chest. The screams of the ghouls and the ruckus of the storm were completely drowned out by the sound of the dragon’s beating wings.
Lyra forced herself not to think about it, making her mind go blank and focusing only on Theo surrounding her senses.
One moment, her feet were firmly on the ground; the next, she could feel Theo’s body tighten further around her as they were lifted into the sky.
The dragon, as careful as a mother with her kin, had scooped them up in one paw.
Lyra dared not open her eyes, forcing her breathing to remain as still and slow as possible.
Lyra could only hear her heartbeat pounding in her ears, matched by Theo's, her face pressed against his chest.
“Theo,” she whimpered, the sound almost entirely muffled.
Theo could feel the subtle vibrations of her speaking against his skin and squeezed her tighter, even without understanding a word.
Lyra could feel the dragon going upward, wind striking against her cheeks, until it turned downward without warning, plummeting towards the sea.
Lyra could only assume—and pray—the creature was picking up her sister and Wyn in its other paw, carting them all off to safety.
As the dragon swept low, something threw it off balance, and it shrieked another desperate noise.
Lyra thought she might go deaf, and without warning, the dragon’s grip on Lyra and Theo released.
They fell into the sea.
Lyra was in shock when she hit the water. The impact knocked her unconscious, their bodies smacking the surface of the sea as though it were concrete. Fragments of bones and ghouls were still littering the surface, scratching their skin and clawing at them as they began to sink beneath the water.
They hadn’t moved fast enough. Cliodhna, her hair still smoking and skin nearly entirely burnt away from her face, had emerged from the depths with a sword of bone, hurling it through the skies. It pierced Niamh’s wing before she could get out of its path.
The shock caused her to drop Theo and Lyra as she rapidly fell beneath the waves, but she was still mobile. Niamh scooped up Wyn and Keira and immediately turned around, scanning the water's surface for where Theo and Lyra had disappeared.
It was a sad thing for a siren to drown.
It went against the laws of nature. The sea from which they were born turned against them in their final moments.
Unconscious, Lyra was trapped in her human form, unable to shift, sinking towards the seafloor alongside Theo.
In their last moments, before they hit the waves made of carnage and the sea flooded with death, Theo and Lyra had looked at each other.
Their siblings would mourn them, but they were dying together, knowing their loved ones were safe.
Cliodhna and her ghouls circled their bodies in the water as they drifted, nearly the size of a whale, the ghouls so thick in the water that they were impossible to see through.
She took immense joy in watching them start to sink, the impact knocking out any remaining sensibilities they had to fight towards the surface.
She watched for almost a full minute, relishing in the sight of her decades-long revenge: the fae prince, born in her seas, returned to them in death after all of these years.
And with a siren, no less! A creature designed to bewitch and beguile, taken in by his charms and meeting her own end.
It brought Cliodhna glee, and she circled them again, like a shark around its drowning prey, refusing to deliver a killing blow.
That was her mistake.
In the water, there was always something bigger than you.
Even if you were a goddess.
From the depths, a current started to build—a geyser shooting straight up from the seabed itself.
It appeared instantaneously, sending Theo and Lyra straight to the surface.
One moment, she was conspiring and watching their inevitable downfall, and in a surge of waves and choppy waters, they had vanished.
Once Theo and Lyra breached the surface and sucked in fresh air, they started coughing, trying to figure out where they were.
“D-don't move!” Theo demanded, reaching across the short distance and holding Lyra’s hand.
They were floating, held above the waves by the geyser of water, held up to the skies like an offering. There was a strong current of magic that ebbed in and out of the water, something different than the goddess and sea creatures they'd surrounded themselves with.
“Wasn't planning on it,” Lyra wheezed, her voice raspy.
She had never experienced anything akin to drowning before—not even the unpleasant experience of getting water up your nose—and she wasn't keen to repeat the experience.
She summoned the last of her strength to shift, bringing her fins back just in case.
Before Theo and Lyra could figure out how they were suspended in midair, Niamh reappeared. She swooped down, barely a scratch on one wing, and plucked them up in her paw. Lyra's stomach churned with the sudden movement, between the near drowning and now the rapid movement through the skies.
“Theo,” she choked out, holding onto him within the clutches of the dragon, as though he was her only lifeline in the world. “What was that?” Lyra tried to think of who could’ve summoned the currents that whisked them out of the depths.
“I don’t know,” Theo coughed, his voice equally ravaged. He managed to free one of his hands and started stroking Lyra's hair, gently detangling some of the long strands.
Niamh whisked through the sky, leaving the scene of carnage behind them.
Exhaustion outweighing any confusion or other emotions they were experiencing. Theo and Lyra found themself dozing, inexplicably safe in a dragon’s grasp.
Far, far away from Cliodhna.